Monthly Archives: October 2014

October 29, 2014Comments Off on Continuous Improvement Applied to Safety at Toyota

A recent article at EHS Today explains how a Toyota plant that manufactures forklifts in Columbus, Ind., makes safety a part of daily life. The facility refers to its safety system as K-HYP, which standards for “kaizen” (continuous improvement) and “How’s your process?” At the facility, safety is a topic of discussion at morning meetings, and each employee is given the ...

October 21, 2014Comments Off on Lean Featured in GE Capital TV Commercial

Mark Graban over at Lean Blog recently wrote about a GE Capital TV commercial that includes the Lean turnaround process in a factory. Graban said: In the 60-second piece, GE highlights how their advisors helped a manufacturing company double efficiency by using Lean methods and by asking “the important question – why?” What happened? “Ideas for improvement started pouring out.” The ...

Basic Overview of Kanban Learning about Kanban can be a great way to help improve just about any production process. While the word may sound odd to most people, the processes involved have been proven effective for nearly half a century. The concept was first developed at Toyota, and has now been accepted by thousands of companies as a best ...

Most people are familiar with the normal Six Sigma methodologies that are used to help make improvements to products or services within a facility. In fact, the standard Six Sigma process has become the industry best practice for most process or product improvements. When you are creating a new product, however, the standard Six Sigma process just doesn’t work. This ...

October 14, 2014Comments Off on Five Essential Lean Tools for Manufacturing

The Right Lean Tools for Manufacturing Lean manufacturing has been growing in popularity for quite some time now. While every facility implements it slightly differently, they can all benefit from having the right lean tools for manufacturing. Look at the following key tools and see if your facility is using them properly. 5S Methodologies This is perhaps the most well ...

Lean manufacturing principles may have originated in manufacturing industries, but in recent years they’ve been used quite effectively in the healthcare industry, too. This topic is covered in a podcast over at Mark Graban’s Lean Blog, in which Graban interviews Paul Plsek, author of the book Accelerating Health Care Transformation with Lean and Innovation: The Virginia Mason Experience. The two ...

Lean methodologies can be used on an organizational level, but also on an individual level. You can use lean to improve your use of time and even to clean out your inbox. In the TEDx Talk above, Bill Peterson, a lean instructor and consultant, explains the basics of lean, as well as how to make lean work for you to help ...

October 9, 2014Comments Off on One-Piece Flow – A Lean Strategy Applied to Clothing Making

Janska, a women’s clothing company that strives to keep all of its manufacturing in the U.S., recently found a way to increase sewing productivity and revenue by using a lean strategy commonly used in industrial manufacturing workplaces: one-piece flow. This method has each person on an assembly line—in this case, each sewer—perform one step of the process and then pass ...